Editorial by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 23, 1909

Editorial

By Editor

The Special Providence of the Ingathering Campaign

In 1908 about one hundred forty missionaries were sent into the fields abroad—almost double the highest record of any previous year. The situation in the fields really forced them out. Just here came in the special providence of the campaign with the Thanksgiving REVIEW for 1908.

What the 1908 Campaign Accomplished.— The sending out last year of one hundred forty missionaries, and the continual expansion of the work in the great mission fields, took every dollar of the mission income, including the extra amount brought in by the campaign. Except for last year's campaign—which brought in over thirty thousand dollars in crisp notes and shining coin—the Mission Board must either have held many of those workers back, fairly by main force, and sent out the word to cut down in every mission field, or it must have faced a shortage of thirty thousand dollars in the opening months of 1909. Either course would have meant a staggering blow to the inspiring program of missionary advance called for by the delegates from all the world at the recent General Conference. The Ingathering campaign for 1908 helped to save the day. It was truly a special providence, timed to the very hour of need.

The Need in 1909.— At the General Conference and in the council immediately following, forty-three married men, with their families, and seventeen single missionaries were recommended to go to fields abroad. As the mission treasury was empty, it was necessary at the very time of appointment to notify all these that except as increased means came in, no further workers could be sent on, save to self-supporting fields. Yet these one hundred three persons (counting the wives) were urgently needed at once in the fifty or more places to which they were assigned. Where some could not accept the call, others were to be secured. As funds have come in, fifty-one have been commissioned, and are either already off or soon to sail. The other fifty-two—who must fill, say thirty posts of need at the four quarters of the earth—ought to be hastened on without delay. But the treasury is obliged to constantly warn us that the work already in hand will consume all the ordinary income. This approaching campaign for 1909 seems the only extra source of income to look to for the money which will warrant the sending out of these workers in the closing days of this year or early in the next. Shall they go?

Specific Calls Now Delaying.— In the program of help agreed upon as the very least the fields could call for this year, the following appointments may be listed as delayed by lack of funds, though not in every case have all the workers been definitely secured:—

West Africa: Two men, and funds for two new stations, without which the advance can not be made.

India: Four men, for city work, book work, and work among the Karens.

Korea: Two men, one a physician, one for school work.

South America: Two men for Peru, one for Ecuador.

China: Six or more men to make up the ten or twelve recommended to be secured this year. China called for forty-two men in the next two years, to open each great division of its territory, which, roughly, is as though we were trying to place two lone workers in each State of the United States, only in that case the States would be better supplied, according to population, than China.

Japan: Four men, one a physician, to place in various parts of a great kingdom we have scarcely touched.

This is not the list of needs: far from it; it is the list of first necessities agreed upon, and which the Harvest Ingathering for missions may help to realize.

Watching for Help.— One of the most pathetic things in the Mission Board correspondence is the note of disappointment sometimes struck as the longed-for help does not appear. Just after the General Conference, and before returning to the French-speaking republic of Haiti, Elder W. J. Tanner was detained in hospital by an operation. “While on my back in the sanitarium,” he wrote, “and while convalescent, I anxiously scanned every REVIEW for the name of that man who I fully expected would be appointed to Haiti to help me in the work there.” The name he looked for has never yet appeared. It seemed impossible to the Board to add just now to West Indian appropriations. In the meantime it may be the man for Haiti will be found. But for this and all the constantly increasing calls the missionary income must be steadily raised. The Seventh-day Adventist people, whose only hope is in the finishing of this work, will lift the rising income higher and higher, and the message will speed on to every land.